BCFPD Shares Info About Special Use Petition
- Posted by Barrington Hills
- On July 3, 2020
Barrington Countryside Fire Protection District Summarizes Reasons
for the Proposed New Fire Station
A special use petition is the subject of a public hearing to be held on Wednesday, July 8, 2020, at 10:00 AM. Copies of the Agenda and items to be considered at this meeting will be made available electronically on the Cook County website on June 29, 2020, at https://www.cookcountyil.gov/agency/zoning-board-appeals-0.
In compliance with President Preckwinkle’s Executive Orders 2020-11, attendance at this meeting will be by remote means only. Written public comments on this item will be accepted until 3:00 PM on July 6, 2020, at ZBA.Emails@cookcountyil.gov. All comments will be read aloud at the meeting with three minutes allotted for each commenter, though every effort will be made to read statements in their entirety. Please refer to Cook County’s ZBA website or call the ZBA directly at 312-603-5040 for more information.
The proposed Fire Station would be located at 1004 S Hough St., Barrington, Illinois, in unincorporated Cook County.
- Barrington Countryside FPD covers 48 square mile, 6 Municipalities and Unincorporated Cook, Lake and McHenry County. North Barrington, Lake Barrington, Barrington Hills, Inverness, South Barrington, Fox River Grove.
- Approximately 2000 calls a year.
- Since separating from the Village have lowered ISO rating from a 6/9 to a 3/4. This is the Insurance Service Organization which rates your fire department and helps with insurance rates. The lower the number the better. Any residence more than 5 miles from a Fire Station will be a 10. Which means significant more money for insurance. 95%of our District has no Fire Hydrants. Our mission is to continue to give the best service we can.
- New station is needed to respond to our residents in the Northeastern, Eastern and Southeastern part of our District. Right now we have Auto Aid Agreements with Lake Zurich and Palatine Rural to insure we have someone as quick as possible to the scene in our Eastern sections since they are more than 5 miles from our stations. Lake Zurich responded 67 times to us last year and we helped them 24 times. Palatine Rural responded 49 times to us and we responded 17 times to them. These numbers need to be closer and it’s not their taxpayers duty to have to respond to our area that much. The new station would help both us and their Districts. The Village of Barrington would like to help but they have their own calls to respond to. We helped them 122 times last year and they helped us 29.
- Last year we had 94 calls in Inverness, 281 calls in unincorporated Barrington and 278 calls in South Barrington. These are the calls that the new station would greatly improve response.
- Will not raise taxes, Our tax levy is at .47 out of a possible .80 we work hard to maintain that level and not increase taxes with increasing the level of service. We have planned to build a station and have staffing for new station.
- Study’s that have been completed, IDOT, Landscape plan, environmental, septic, wetland, traffic study, structural soil borings, Army corp of Engineers, appraisal of property’s
- The need to respond to “ALL RESIDENTS” in under 6 minutes. Whether it is a medical emergency or a fire, or any other emergency! time is critical.
- When we have multiple calls in one District it takes 15-20 minutes for a response from the other station. That is unacceptable. With the response plan with the new station, our single vehicle from the proposed station would respond to calls on the Eastern part of the District with another vehicle either from our station 1 or station 2. That way there is a quick response not only to EMS calls but fires. The rest of the area is still loaded for another call instead of waiting 15 minutes. Much more efficient! From the beginning, we are here for the residents and we want to be the best we can be without raising taxes. We are here to serve our residents and raise the level of service in our District.
